Articles and Essays – Page 13

Of Knights, L-Shaped Movements Crisis and Climax…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

In the game of chess, the Knight is the only piece or character on the board that can jump over another pieces even those who are friendly.

The Knight moves in a “L”-shaped pattern. The Knight does this by going 2 steps forward, or backward, horizontal or vertical and then 1 step left or right or by going 1 step north, south, east or west, and then 2 steps left or right.

The Knight can also be seen as moving 2 spaces diagonally and then horizontal or vertical to the next space.

For this reason the Knight’s path of movement has never been well-defined.

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Of Towers, Castles and the Battles Writers Wage…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The Rook, Tower or Castle in the game of chess speaks to boundaries.

Towers and Castles of the medieval era served not simply as homes, but also places of protection, that place to which rulers, those of their court, and the soldiers guarding them retreated and from which they waged battle.

The Tower provided a place from which the sentry or guardsmen could look out and view those coming to do battle or offend–those who sought to defeat the monarch and occupy her or his home.

Each time we set out to write a story or novel, we wage a war.

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Of Rooks, Guardians of the Threshold and Boundaries…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The chess piece or character known as The Rook, which is also called The Castle or as I like to say, The Tower can move as many spaces along a row or column on the chessboard.

The Rooks (each player has 2) combined with The Queen, form the major chess pieces. In this way they operate like Guardians of the Threshold preventing the opposing player’s pieces from gaining or capturing a player’s King.

Guardians of the Threshold in a novel hold the boundaries between the protagonist and her or his goal.

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Of Queens, Dilemmas and Goals…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The Queen, interestingly in chess is the most powerful piece on the board. She can move in all directions and for as many spaces as needed to overtake the position of a chess piece for capture.

Her only limitation is that unlike the Knight she cannot jump over a piece.

But then why would she? Her goal is to capture pieces towards the ultimate objective of protecting the King.

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Of Pawns, Rooks, Knights and Bishops…

3 Comments / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

This weekend I played my first game of chess.

My eldest now 23 learned the game from my husband. Like the cello, I have always admired people who played chess.

It truly is a game of thought, forethought and reasoning. Unlike the game of checkers that I learned as a child and play with my youngest who is eleven, chess pieces have names and characters.

Like the elements of fiction, these characters or pieces have 1 or 2 directions in which you can move them, defined tasks that propel the plot of the game.

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Of Cognition, Revision, and the Internet…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“The emerging model of cognition is as a sustained act of imagination, and therefore continuously active participation in the consensual hallucination of reality.”

–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville

What if everything we experience in life is truly the occurrence of a dream, that our living is in essence, one small part of larger reality, the life and time of someone outside of us, or a person whose life surrounds, encompasses and holds that of ours?

What if the decisions we make, the actions we carry out are predetermined by those, past and present of this person?

What if we are but an aspect or one dimension of the terrain of the personality held by another?

What if the joy we experience in our dream is the nightmare some else is experiencing?

When does our madness become or stir another person’s joy?

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Of Bootstraps, Climbing and The Eye…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“Every piece of writing is a bootstrap affair whereby you use the crisis of the next sentence to get to the one beyond.”

–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville

The word bootstrap usually conjures ideas of a man-child walking in the snow for miles on his way to school, alone and persevering against the elements.

How many times have we heard a parent or grandparent extol how the challenges he endured as a child made him the adult he presently is?

Many jokes center on the extrapolation of one’s difficulties that either did not exist to the degree described or simply sprang from tales spun to inspire awe and respect.

And yet writer, Kris Saknussemm aphorism touches on an all too apparent truth that many of us writers miss or choose to avoid.

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